Norfolk and Suffolk - Excellent

[Serial_Apologist]

Norfolk and Suffolk......and Essex.

The weather for the next few days looks atrocious. My health will now never be good. This week, my mother has been diagnosed with osteo-arthritis on top of everything else and my father was diagnosed with a non-malignant cancer below his eye and after weeks of waiting logopenic progressive aphasia. All of this could be worse and we are all on timescales - in my father's case his operation will not be until after Christmas. As for his other condition, well, we have known it there or thereabouts for one or two years. Any of us could be firmly rooted to the spot because of ill health or responsibilities to others soonest or later so we have had a conversation and my parents have agreed that I should try to pursue my adventures while the iron is hot. Each time I'm sitting here quivering until it is underway. But sometimes one just has to do what one's instinct says one has to do in brief windows of opportunity.

So tomorrow - and I detest crossing London - I hope to be in the Bobby Robson stand at 3pm, as arranged, to try to help Ipswich off the bottom of the Championship. Then on Sunday I'm expecting to be discovering the vibes of Brantham and East Bergholt in a way that my grandfather never did although I found out last year that his family came from there in the mid 1800s. I never knew him because he died at 50 in 1939 so it will be the closest I'll ever get to him. The aim in pouring rain if necessary is to look at the churchyards and get myself to Dedham and Flatford Mill for this is Constable country and the Hay Wain. On Monday I will be coming back home but I'm hoping if it has all gone well to make a significant detour via Shenfield and Hockley to Canewdon on the remote Essex estuary. This is renowned witchy territory, as beloved by television spiritualists, Jamie Oliver has interests there not that it matters, but from my point of view I want to see the woods where my Nan and my Mum spotted a German soldier and ran for their lives only subsequently to discover that he was dead.

The news is full of things that seem like truths but are fake. People like to present aspects of history as fake when actually they were truths. It is fashionable to say that there were no dead Germans in East Anglia during the war and that anyone who says there were is a liar. My Mum is the second most truthful person I have met in my life and my Nan was the most truthful so, yes, there was a dead German in those woods. Given the later covered up history of Bradwell, the area is all radioactive but at my time of life I am prepared to take the risk.

I'm raving mad of course.

(Ah, Bobby - worth a re-run, I feel, I daren't talk about the following weekend which might not happen, too scared at the moment - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLQ5Nii0DEM)

(I've bough that ticket too, though)

You might get the enviable chance to see the Hay Wain in the rain, Lat. (Just sayin' )

Many of my family either have roots or reside in Suffolk. Not having visited the county since I were a lad, I wonder if it still exudes at large the same stand-offishness towards outsiders it did back then, birdman Percy Edwards excepted. The sort of place where the local pub would bring those scenes in Westerns to mind, where a butt-chewing Clint Eastwood would thrust his dramatic entrance through the louvered entrance doors and the bar full of incumbents plus the honky-tonk piano would instantly go silent. All would look round vacantly and then just carry on. "Gimme a jar of whatever you call beer 'round these... parts". Me granddad always claimed to prefer Essex for its friendlier people and for having more hills.

[Lat-Literal]

You might get the enviable chance to see the Hay Wain in the rain, Lat. (Just sayin' )

Many of my family either have roots or reside in Suffolk. Not having visited the county since I were a lad, I wonder if it still exudes at large the same stand-offishness towards outsiders it did back then, birdman Percy Edwards excepted. The sort of place where the local pub would bring those scenes in Westerns to mind, where a butt-chewing Clint Eastwood would thrust his dramatic entrance through the louvered entrance doors and the bar full of incumbents plus the honky-tonk piano would instantly go silent. All would look round vacantly and then just carry on. "Gimme a jar of whatever you call beer 'round these... parts". Me granddad always claimed to prefer Essex for its friendlier people and for having more hills.

Thank you S-A. We must do that jazz event in Cwoydon in October. I would be so pleased to meet you. I will in two days no doubt find out. I sit in gardens so when the cowboys come in I've already done a runner to Van Morrison's "In the Haunts of Ancient Peace". This sums me up even when typing in my bedroom. I have had three friends from East Anglia . Five if you include Essex. The most genuine one, not necessarily the one I would have mostly aligned with in character in the past as more distinct personalities can be overly persuasive, is the only one who has the accent. Sadly, he is severely disabled now. A keen Norwich supporter and in the 1980s I was there for a match with him, he would no doubt be appalled that I've gone all Portman Road. I'm going for it now in a big way and am prepared to break all the rules. I can't be doing at 55 with one club or two clubs if I can have five or six if not more.

I'm getting a geography of my real life here and enjoying it. Until one does the research, one doesn't know. There is difficult stuff ahead but not so much in London. I'm doing Charlton on 6 October but I know what my folks were really about so I also intend to be in Millwall sooner rather than later. I have been before but not to the New Den. When the second vote comes, sorry, I do want the out but there is absolutely no way on earth that I am ever going to vote for a party led by Mr Johnson. I'm now the gooey eyed May thing. Whatever she decides, I will go along with, fracking aside, and she really doesn't believe in it. A mixed system. Pah. How very weird. 20 more years. I can be a bloody diffilcult man when it suits. Ta.

Where were we?

[LMcD]

I would say that Suffolk people are a lot less insular, and consequently a lot friendlier, these days than they were when I was a schoolboy in the 1950s and early 1960s. In those days you hardly ever heard a non-Suffolk accent but now you hear a very wide range - this is partly attributable, certainly in the area of East Suffolk where I live, to the influx of BT and dock workers, and seasonal labourers - fruit-pickers and the like - from Eastern Europe. Increased familiarity with these 'incomers', plus greater opportunities to travel outside the county, have both played a part in this welcome change. But we still have our 'big skies' that help make the place a bit special.
This afternoon we attended a showing in our local library of a wonderful 2017 documentary called 'Life On The Deben' - highly recommended.
(I went the same school as Percy Edwards's son).

[teamsaint]

I watched a bit of Ipswich v Brentford during the week.

They are going to have to get the ball to Jackson on his head, because , well, he is a lot better with it than he is with his feet. Still, a useful point against “ high flying Brentford”,but our office Town fan says they are pants, and the league table says as much. I haven’t really forgiven Ipswich for the endless beatings they gave us when we had a good side, but they had a better one in the late seventies and early eighties, including a 7-0.
Have a great trip Lat, ( pity Thameslink only goes through London from and to useless places ) and enjoy the game.

[Quarky]

....uummm - My grandmother hailed from Blundeston - David Copperfield connection?

I did some investigation a few years back, and came across a wonderful little village, perhaps in the Bury St. Edmunds / Diss region, which really took me back to an earlier time. A steep hill down into the village with heavily thatched cottages alongside the road, and at the bottom of the hill a great pub with a large garden. I can't remember the name of the village, Google maps couldn't help - Swan......??

[Lat-Literal]

I would say that Suffolk people are a lot less insular, and consequently a lot friendlier, these days than they were when I was a schoolboy in the 1950s and early 1960s. In those days you hardly ever heard a non-Suffolk accent but now you hear a very wide range - this is partly attributable, certainly in the area of East Suffolk where I live, to the influx of BT and dock workers, and seasonal labourers - fruit-pickers and the like - from Eastern Europe. Increased familiarity with these 'incomers', plus greater opportunities to travel outside the county, have both played a part in this welcome change. But we still have our 'big skies' that help make the place a bit special.
This afternoon we attended a showing in our local library of a wonderful 2017 documentary called 'Life On The Deben' - highly recommended.
(I went the same school as Percy Edwards's son).

Hey, perhaps we could meet as Saturday night is looking like Novitol with Talksport but I won't push it - I'm not the pushing kind.

One of my Essex mates would have done but is going fishing. I will look at Ipswich and Colchester but towns don't lure in the main.

I watched a bit of Ipswich v Brentford during the week.

They are going to have to get the ball to Jackson on his head, because , well, he is a lot better with it than he is with his feet. Still, a useful point against “ high flying Brentford”,but our office Town fan says they are pants, and the league table says as much. I haven’t really forgiven Ipswich for the endless beatings they gave us when we had a good side, but they had a better one in the late seventies and early eighties, including a 7-0.
Have a great trip Lat, ( pity Thameslink only goes through London from and to useless places ) and enjoy the game.

Thank you as always. It feels unreal until I get going.

The mate who I went to Norfolk with is a many decades old Brentford supporter and he goes regularly. There is plus and minus thing going on there. The minus imo is the anticipated move to a new stadium. The plus is that their transfer policy on limited budgets is amazing. It is also a part of a wider philosophy/strategy the name of which I have forgotten. The Championship is fascinating - so many big sides - and while Leeds, early 1970s were dirty, the Bielsa thing is very romantic. I do want that to work. My big no - F Lampard at Derby.

[gradus]

Enjoy the game Lat, a neighbour has lent me his season ticket so maybe we R3'ers could lead the Ipswich crowd in a rendition of Va Pensiero, if only to put Bolton off their game.

[LMcD]

Hey, perhaps we could meet as Saturday night is looking like Novitol with Talksport but I won't push it - I'm not the pushing kind.

One of my Essex mates would have done but is going fishing. I will look at Ipswich and Colchester but towns don't lure in the main.


Thank you as always. It feels unreal until I get going.


The mate who I went to Norfolk with is a many decades old Brentford supporter and he goes regularly. There is plus and minus thing going on there. The minus imo is the anticipated move to a new stadium. The plus is that their transfer policy on limited budgets is amazing. It is also a part of a wider philosophy/strategy the name of which I have forgotten. The Championship is fascinating - so many big sides - and while Leeds, early 1970s were dirty, the Bielsa thing is very romantic. I do want that to work. My big no - F Lampard at Derby.

I must admit I hardly ever find a good reason to visit Ipswich these days...recent trips to the Hospital DON'T count as a good reason!
It could be argued that 'Ipswich isn't Suffolk'. just as 'London isn't England'. Its occasional attempts to become a city are probably more based on jealousy of Norwich than anything else.
The current predicament of the 'Tractor Boys', thrown into stark relief by the reaction to the sad passing of Keven Beattie, reminds me that it's an astonishing 56 years since all 29,000 of us at Portman Road were awaiting the result of the Burnley-Chelsea match, scarcely daring to believe that we'd become English league champions at the first attempt (an achievement overlooked during all the hoo-hah about Leicester City).

[gradus]

I must admit I hardly ever find a good reason to visit Ipswich these days...recent trips to the Hospital DON'T count as a good reason!
It could be argued that 'Ipswich isn't Suffolk'. just as 'London isn't England'. Its occasional attempts to become a city are probably more based on jealousy of Norwich than anything else.
The current predicament of the 'Tractor Boys', thrown into stark relief by the reaction to the sad passing of Keven Beattie, reminds me that it's an astonishing 56 years since all 29,000 of us at Portman Road were awaiting the result of the Burnley-Chelsea match, scarcely daring to believe that we'd become English league champions at the first attempt (an achievement overlooked during all the hoo-hah about Leicester City).

Seconded.

[Lat-Literal]

I must admit I hardly ever find a good reason to visit Ipswich these days...recent trips to the Hospital DON'T count as a good reason!
It could be argued that 'Ipswich isn't Suffolk'. just as 'London isn't England'. Its occasional attempts to become a city are probably more based on jealousy of Norwich than anything else.
The current predicament of the 'Tractor Boys', thrown into stark relief by the reaction to the sad passing of Keven Beattie, reminds me that it's an astonishing 56 years since all 29,000 of us at Portman Road were awaiting the result of the Burnley-Chelsea match, scarcely daring to believe that we'd become English league champions at the first attempt (an achievement overlooked during all the hoo-hah about Leicester City).

In the past hour, I have got back home.

This was in tone a very different trip to the one to Devon etc, shorter for one thing (just two nights) and more wintry (the rain was heavy for three quarters of a Sunday incessant and then it returned in the evening). It was also a bit more like work as I remember it (Novotel is like the Citadines in Ferney Voltaire outside Geneva in the 1990s without the kitchenette in the room and I was when in Dedham Vale able to recall how Suffolk residents fought each other in front of me over options for London airport expansion at Stansted beyond anything encountered at other airport exhibitions in the early 2000s). Additionally, this was a trip to discover if I could not only cross London alone these days but go further alone, without the support of a pal, and it was never going to be based on my preferred prettiness which in the main is coastal but rather an attempt to follow up on findings in my family trees. It occurred not only shortly after the virtually impossible had been achieved so the novelty of it all wasn't there but also at the end of a week of three parental diagnoses. None of this is to say that it wasn't worth doing. As with other things now, there was a sense in me that it had to be done and I am grateful to have done it or else I would have always wondered and regretted.

Not so much detail this time round.

Day 1 - To Ipswich

However, the journey up was fairly straightforward. I just happened to get lost in the walk between London Bridge and Liverpool Street because I hadn't done that walk in that direction before - try finding a person who doesn't blank you and knows the area well on a Saturday morning and it is virtually impossible so god bless the labourers who will walk with you to get you back on the right track - and of course there was also the madness that is the coach from Ingatestone to Marks Tey because of never ending engineering works. I was anticipating that and had put up with it a month earlier but this time it was utter pandemonium with railway officials having stand up rows on who was in charge as the coaches tried to leave. But the rest of the journey by train was fine. There are a lot of young women on the network who say "like" between almost every two words and their boyfriends copy them when in their company. They also say "can I get a coffee" instead of "may I have" or better still "I'd like". This reflects the "what can I get" society, not that anyone expects to get anything, whereas the more traditional "may" was more about doffing your cap in implication and still not expecting to get anything. I say "I'd like" - it's much more direct and the proper use of "like".

Anyhow, Novotel Ipswich Central is on Greyfriars Way and not on Friars Street which is somewhere completely different. It is 700 yards from the Portman Road stadium but allow a good hour and a half to find it after passing the Portman Road stadium. This will give you an excellent opportunity to walk around the main part of the town to experience it fully and other parts of the town that you had previously decided not to bother visiting. On your walk with pack, you can expect to experience a town that is a great deal more attractive than its reputation. I was really, really surprised by its olde worlde charm. It wasn't at all as I had anticipated it. As I said to a local, I think it undersells itself. While he agreed, he added "but it does depend where you look". The booking in time of 2pm alas is sufficiently late to require three pints in three different pubs but then you never know quite what to expect at a football match so insulation along with self-congratulation for being there and so early feels right. On a Saturday lunchtime, every pub in the centre is not a proper pub but goes under a modern one word name and any amount of skipping them all leads to the conclusion there is no other option. That is, even with another pet hate of mine, "alright mate" bouncers on the door.

So I did try one and it was contrary to expectation full of football supporters. They were ok enough. Then ultimately I found somewhere with a proper name and a bit more salubrious with lower key football supporters and others. It just happened to be that I picked the table in the garden where a bloke was having a very loud and heated row via a mobile phone with his mate which only subsided when the one at the other end accepted him back for later that evening on account that he was wearing rubber. The third - wouldn't you know it - was the one that I had hoped to find much earlier and appeared on a street just before I was due to check in. The Thomas Wolseley is a very good establishment with a pretty courtyard along with its own tea stand and a café in what appears to be in a related building. A late middle aged couple offered to let me join them under an umbrella as the rain was already starting. They were Ipswich Town regulars. This was rather good although I hadn't realised that talk of having been at Exeter City recently wouldn't go down especially well as I hadn't looked at the detail of the encounter between the two teams earlier in the season. Then it was the checking in - welcoming and a nice room - and a quick run round ish to the, erm, football.

Anyone who checked the results will know that it was 0-0. This was one of their better results. The current team is very, very poor. In Bobby Robson stand lower, one stands although allocated a seat. This is absolutely fine. However, several other things were not so fine. The advertising of hot food when there is no hot food available. The promise of a "compound" to which one can escape at half time when there is no such compound. The fact that the numerous screens after 45 minutes show every score in Britain to be 0-0 when every score in Britain is not 0-0 after 45 minutes. And the absence of the drummer who the couple had told me would definitely be there when he wasn't, presumably because of form. The ground is moderate in size. Some might call it slightly austere but it is likeable enough and away from the football pubs it is all extremely civil. The f word affliction which from the male population in Ipswich was in evidence everywhere is if anything much dulled down there because there are so many women, children, very average young men and we the trainspotter types.

Obviously, though, there was frustration. One can live with it. By far and away the most amazing aspect of the place is the fact that it has a Bobby Robson stand and an Alf Ramsey stand and a statue to Alf Ramsey and a large picture of Bobby Robson. That part is truly emotional. That such a small team on paper in a small town did so well four years before Alf led England to victory. The way in which it achieved so much under the management of Bobby. It is the history. It is truly remarkable and one is sort of left to wonder how that could have possibly been the case and I like that mystery. Normally I don't "do" teams that wear blue shirts but there was enough there to make me feel that I could make this an exception. It didn't work for me as Exeter had done but then that was to expect too much. I liked them. I think they will be relegated but I really hope that they will not be relegated. And it is a strange place Ipswich. Not only is the history of its football surprising but the mind boggles at who decided that with Radio Orwell it would be one of the first 19 places for an ILR station. So this was it really - and I spent the evening safely in the Novotel as I don't go out on Saturday night in any town - it was good to have experienced the actuality in the inexplicable.

[Lat-Literal]

Day 2, Part 1 - Millets, Ipswich, then East Bergholt to Flatford

On awaking and I didn't have a great sleep, the rain was torrential. The woman in the breakfast room said that it would continue until teatime. This was extremely irksome and it required a strategy. I waited until 9.30am and decided to walk to get soaked while walking to Millets to buy waterproofs when they opened. It took me three quarters of an hour to find it. There I encountered lovely staff - the woman who was just one year younger than me was especially engaging - and after an elaborate procedure involving me changing down to shorts at the counter - I got what I needed at 15% off although that wasn't strictly required. She had just enjoyed our conversation. Then I had to walk back to the hotel. I was soaked through so I changed and then asked for a taxi to East Bergholt as any other option just wasn't possible because of the weather. The taxi driver was from East Asia and he told me that his other job was as an East Asian community worker as - I hadn't realised this - many such families went to Suffolk as early as the 1940s for industrial work and chose to stay there.

It turned out that East Bergholt is about two miles long and, of course, he dropped me off at one end so it took me a while to find the church in the rain at the other but I got there and it is very memorable. Unusual from the outside and plenty of very good stained glass on the inside. I am not overly keen on looking at gravestones but this was necessary from a historical point of view. Sadly, I did not find any with the name of my grandfather but so many early stones are weathered. Then I walked to Flatford, obviously getting lost in fields along the way. The weather didn't worry me although it wasn't pleasant. An hour or more later I knew that I was close to Willy Lott's house and the real picture of the Hay Wain in 2018.

On studying a map outside the National Trust visitor information building at Flatford, a woman who was not unlike Nicky Morgan - I have found that there are a lot of such people in this country - emerged to provide advice on heading to the museum first. It was a useful chat although not exactly oozing in huge warmth. The museum was sufficiently informative to provide useful background to John Constable although I had probably learnt more about him from quotes of his in East Bergholt church including his positive opinions on Shakespeare and Turner. The rain had just about stopped and on following the path round, there was a group of about twenty people standing near to the mill and spread out across the entire width of the path. It wasn't really possible to walk past it and to try to have done so wouldn't have been civil. So I stood there and waited as the guide spoke about how the National Trust had originally been advised on financial grounds not to renovate the Lott building but they had done it anyway and how Flatford was one of just three NT field science centres in Britain.

Ultimately the group was ready to move on and the crabby sort who was giving them this information asked me if I was formally a part of it. I said "no". She said "well, we can't take you" after which they all walked into the mill, the inside of which is rarely seen by the public. On the plus side, I told myself that in just a few paces on, I would be at the scene of the painting and it would be more peaceful. But just as I got there a large white van came down the lane behind me and kept its engine on. Subsequently I continued on for about five minutes to where it was possible to have another view of the water but that required working my way around the numerous "private property : keep out" signs in the vicinity. Many of these appeared to have been put up by the NT and/or the Field Science Centre. At the gift shop, postcards were on sale for a whopping 70 pence. In the next door café, which didn't feel like it was being managed wonderfully, I bought a coffee and took it out to a wet bench in a quiet corner beside the bridge where a robin greeted me and stayed for the duration.

[Beef Oven!]

Just back from a very pleasant night in Sudbury, Suffolk.

[Lat-Literal]

Just back from a very pleasant night in Sudbury, Suffolk.

You should have said.

I was very close to there yesterday.

[Lat-Literal]

Day 2, Part 2 - Flatford to Dedham and Manningtree and back to Ipswich

I used to be a huge fan of the National Trust and they have obviously done many wonderful things historically. However, I feel that they have become yet another 21st Century charity with an emphasis on high prices and a branding via directional signage in all senses which sadly can diminish the atmosphere in some places, especially the most touristy. Additionally, no one I met there seemed overly friendly or hugely enthusiastic and some in the AONB were snooty. Flatford is very pretty and I am pleased to have seen it but I had to ask myself what it was that I had hoped to find there. The answer says a lot perhaps about how the imagination can mislead one. I think it was a combination of Delius and Nick Drake, neither of whom had direct associations with the place although Drake was not from a million miles away. Neither of these were experienced. Next, I walked from Flatford to Dedham beside the riverbank and through fields of cows to Dedham. For all of the rain that had fallen, it wasn't too muddy underfoot and the sun was now shining. I felt that on reaching Dedham, I could only have half an hour there if I were to walk back to Flatford and then onto Mannigtree before it got dark. What I had seen of East Bergholt had reminded me of Chaldon and what I saw of Dedham in that briefest of glimpses reminded me of Bletchingley, both of which are local to me. In contrast, parts of Devon and Cornwall could easily be in another country.

The walk to Manningtree was mostly through fields. I had expected to see more water and may have done so if I had chosen an alternative route. But it was lovely to do that walk in late afternoon sunshine even if under time pressures. One of the more memorable moments was encountering a man with a drone. I had never seen a drone being operated before. By the time I got to Manningtree station, I had walked about 10 miles that day. Being tired, my mind was not really up to working out how to get a ticket at an unmanned station on a Sunday evening or for making sure that I got onto a train heading in the right direction. There weren't any taxis outside the station either. So I felt I had no alternative but to walk into Manningtree itself. Across a busy roundabout and someway into what was an industrial park, I gave up on trying to find it and walked back to the station. Once there, though, my route back to Ipswich still wasn't clear to me so I went through the process of trying to find Manningtree again. It was by then quite dark. At a shop, they tried to contact a taxi firm for me but it wasn't operating taxis until Monday. Slightly alarmed, I kept on walking. A chavvy sort of couple turned out to be the saviours by telling me that Jake in the Skinners Arms would be able to help. This he kindly did while well oiled locals were supposedly watching Arsenal on the television though the ones I spoke with hadn't heard of Lacazette who had scored.

The driver was a local who had been operating taxis for a long while but as a bricklayer in the early 1990s he had spent three years in Germany doing as he put it an Auf Wiedersehen Pet. Once back at the Novotel, I was struck by the number of workmen as well as office types who stayed there presumably being paid for by their companies. These are not always people who change their methods of communicating just because they are in a hotel when after very large numbers of drinks. It hadn't quite been the case on the previous night that I didn't venture into town. Knowing it was a Saturday night, I had poked my head in as it were just to have it confirmed that there were groups of marauding teenagers as with anywhere and until an addict living on the streets had approached me for my money. Returning quickly, I had sat outside talking football with a layer of BT fibre optics who was covered in tattoos of Liverpool FC. While we were there, the addict turned up, having followed me along on the street. The fibre optics man handed him £40 and somewhat ironically gave him a lecture on not spending it on alcohol. He then said to me that he could afford it as he had so much money he didn't know what to do with it. Not having seen the quay at Exeter, I thought on this the Sunday evening I'd try to see the quay at Ipswich rather than having similar conversations on the concourse. But immediately it started to rain again so I went back and had an evening meal in the Novotel restaurant where it was very quiet and in contrast almost upmarket. With hindsight, it felt like the right move as it had been a long day and I was tired.

[vinteuil]

... ah! Beefy's photo of our post-Brexit England, I see...

.